Finding congressional voice: Fenno’s paradox and congressional public relations in the aftermath of the 2017 congressional baseball shooting

Abstract

Scholarship on congressional public relations has been limited and largely focused on the relationships between individual members and their constituents rather than on Congress as an institution. Unlike other organizations, the United States Congress lacks a cohesive organizational identity, with members often “running against Congress” or bifurcated into partisan camps. On June 14th, 2017, shooter James Hodgkinson opened fire on Republican members of Congress, their staff, and members of their families as they practiced for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity, a rare but long-standing tradition of bipartisan camaraderie among members. In the days that followed, members in both chambers responded to the attack through statements, interviews, floor speeches, and social media posts. I analyze 106 of these messages through the lenses of organizational voice and organizational identity. I argue that by positioning the attack as an assault on Congress and on the purity of America’s pastime, members rejected partisan framings of the attack while espousing a shared rejection of political violence. Most importantly, members constituted a cohesive, bipartisan identity for Congress that stood in opposition to dominant trends of affective polarization and declining social capital among members. The study illustrates the constitutive potential of restorative rhetoric following a disaster and the unique insights to be gleaned from an institutional understanding of congressional public relations.